Reference Information
Title: Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
Author: Lauren Slater
Editor: W.W Norton & Company, 2008
Chapter 10: Chipped
Summary
This chapter discussed the creation and practice of psychosurgery, including procedures such as lobotomies. The author claims Antonio Moniz to be the father of psychosurgery, and discussed his processes and findings before narrating the particular procedure of one patient that the author was allowed to follow. While these surgeries started out as being highly unsafe and questionable, there have been many improvements with new technology and many benefits are cited as result of the procedure.
Discussion
I found the discussion of psychosurgery to be fairly interesting, especially because of its controversy surrounding the fact that many people apparently consider the brain to be sacred. For example, many people worried that the lobotomies were taking away a person's soul. I liked how the author stated that all of the worry surrounding such methods is likely to be caused by the human need for suffering, and I found it interesting that the patient that the author followed talked about having more psychosurgery if he wasn't quite happy enough.
I found the discussion of psychosurgery to be fairly interesting, especially because of its controversy surrounding the fact that many people apparently consider the brain to be sacred. For example, many people worried that the lobotomies were taking away a person's soul. I liked how the author stated that all of the worry surrounding such methods is likely to be caused by the human need for suffering, and I found it interesting that the patient that the author followed talked about having more psychosurgery if he wasn't quite happy enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment